White House Readies Prescription Plan

The thousands of beneficiaries who participate in traditional Medicare would be unable to get prescription drug coverage being considered by President Bush unless they enrolled in private plans.

The administration is readying a proposal to offer the prescription drug benefits and catastrophic illness coverage to seniors for the first time as an inducement to leave the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program and join private but government-subsidized health care plans, according to officials working on the plan with President Bush.

The majority of seniors _ 85 percent _ are in the traditional Medicare program, which would still be available but without the new benefits. Medicare currently has a program where seniors can enroll in HMOs. However, it has been criticized because the private companies have abandoned thousands of Medicare patients as they fled many areas, complaining that the costs were too high.

The proposal is similar to plans pushed by Republicans last year. The Republican-controlled House passed a $350 billion, 10-year Medicare proposal that would have allowed private insurers to administer the Medicare benefit. A similar plan stalled in the then-Democratic controlled Senate.

Republicans have said they hope to enact a plan this year, now that the GOP controls the House, Senate and White House.

President Bush is expected to devote part of Tuesday's State of the Union address to health care, and outline his Medicare plan Wednesday in Michigan. Final details, however, are not expected until later.

Without providing specifics, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Bush "believes that seniors deserve more choices and more options in their health care plans."

Democrats immediately attacked the proposal, which was first reported by The New York Times.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., the top Democrat on the Senate's Health, Education and Labor Committee, called it "a blatant move to privatize Medicare for the benefit of HMOs and powerful insurance companies _ not patients."

"It's exactly the opposite of what seniors want and need," Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said in a statement. "The president should go back to the drawing board, scrap his HMO drug plan, and write a Medicare drug plan."

Both Republican plans last year and the White House proposal would leave many seniors still having to reach into their own pockets for thousands of dollars a year for prescription drugs.

Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., said the plan "leaves no doubt: he (Bush) wants to end Medicare as we know it." Stark is the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee's health panel, which oversees Medicare.

Officials at AARP, the nation's largest senior citizen lobby, expressed concern, saying the traditional Medicare program should carry a drug benefit.

"We feel strongly that there needs to be a drug benefit for everyone regardless of which part of the system they're in," said John Rother, the group's director of policy and strategy. "People for good reasons want to stay with their current Medicare program. They should have something meaningful in terms of drug coverage. They should not be left completely bare."